The Fallacy of “We have to Dive Deeper”

I’m not sure whether it is the “Fear of Missing Out” or a lack of trust in ourselves that causes us to put off making a decision until we exhaust every possible option, then end up choosing the first idea we thought of!

What makes us believe we always have to dive deeper and waste time doing so??

Searching for a hotel in Istanbul for a short getaway trip on a spur-of-the-moment burst of inspiration,? a quick?Google search for hotels immediately returned three great deals at the top of the results. They were all in the location I was interested in, had all the amenities I was looking for, and were priced in the range I was willing to spend on the hotel for this trip.?

However, wanting to make sure I had secured the best deal, I kept scrolling through the myriad of hotels on offer, then switched to Expedia for more. After I had perused Expedia’s selection and was still not satisfied that I had found the optimum solution beyond a reasonable doubt, I moved on to a third website offering last-minute suggestions, where I continued on my quest to sort through yet another list, just to check whether there might be some even better deal still lurking in the shadows where the previous searches had failed to find them. That list exhausted, I then went back to the original Google search, which then led me through a variety of customer reviews and blog posts before I lost myself in a maze? of photos, videos, and Google Earth locations.

So, it was very much later when I realized, to my dismay, that not only had I just wasted three hours but that the best hotel was, in fact, the very one I had liked right at the start. The plethora of additional information and choices did not help me make a better decision. In fact, if “time is money”, then I might as well have booked the Ritz right away; it might? have been more economical and made for a great stay. Instead, I had wasted time agonizing over negligible differences and cluttering up my mental energy with unnecessary data instead of being practical, pragmatic, and more productive.

Consultants, managers, and investors are addicted to, or may even hide behind, bewildering amounts of information so that their clients get an impression of the complexity of their jobs and the extraordinary skills they must possess to provide such advice.

“If you want to impress people, make things complicated. If you want to help people, keep it simple.”

——Frank Kern

In business, countless studies are commissioned one after the other, even though the essential important facts are available at the outset, and there is nothing more to be gained by spending more time and money on expensive additional research. The very act of delaying the decision-making until additional information, or supplementary information is obtained often wastes time, and money, and can put your business at a disadvantage if you are late to the table, and the competition has arrived there first.?

How, then, do we get away from trying to amass ALL DATA possible, and let go of the? “dive deeper” fallacy? If the delay in the decision making is shown to create gaps in performance which reduce effectiveness of outcomes, then surely it makes sense for leaders to make a decision based on the data available to them, then adjust the course accordingly if and when more meaningful data comes to light. Then leaders would not be led into the trap of sitting tight and refraining from taking action until their quest for more information is exhausted, while all the time watching the competition overtake and scoop them out.

Superfluous knowledge is, by definition, worthless, and can serve as a distraction, an excuse for inaction or the inability to turn things around; “We just do not have enough data”. If you know your way from your house to your work, as you’ve done it before and have experience, just jump in the car and get there. The plethora of additional data on the road conditions, speed camera position, degrees of road incline, traffic statistics, minute-to-minute weather forecast will not be helpful, and in fact, may distract you from getting safely from point A to point B on the road you have already driven so many times.?

Leaders stand or fall on their ability to make decisions when it matters.

If you are putting off making a decision then you have, in effect, made an unconscious decision - you have decided not to choose- and that decision can be very costly.

The human mind has a natural aversion to taking any action for which it has no previously stored information. How, then, do you gain the experience and fill in the gaps in your information banks, unless you take action??

It takes courage. While the mind is risk averse and screaming at you to exercise caution, it takes courage to decide to choose. However, the action can have only two outcomes - it was the correct action to take, or it was less than perfect, but your decision and your action will provide you with the information you need, so that you can quickly adjust accordingly.

So, getting back to my break in Istanbul. What would have happened if I had just chosen one of the hotels that Google showed me in the first search? If I just booked the hotel, without researching the entire leisure facilities of Istanbul, I would either have the perfect break at the best price, or I would arrive at my hotel to discover that it was now $10 cheaper on Expedia.?

I lost $10 or I saved 3 hours?

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#leadership ?#entrepreneurs #businessadvice?#decisionmaking #procrastination

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Prof. Dr. Admir Had?i? has been at the forefront of academic medicine for 2+ decades. He has worked as a doctor, researcher, entrepreneur, inventor, touring musician and Belgian beer maker (DR BLUES Belgian Brews?). He is a recipient of several prestigious awards for his research and educational achievements. He has authored several best-selling medical textbooks on anesthesiology, which have been translated into several languages and used as standard texts at universities worldwide (McGraw Hill?Professional Publishing Division). Dr Had?i? directs a global medical, and educational company (NYSORA, Inc.). He is married and a father of five.